Less Pressure, More Grace

Something that I’ve struggled with lately is putting lots of pressure on myself to succeed, do more, and be the best that I can be in my business. While those are nice goals to have, they can sometimes get pretty unhealthy if you aren’t graceful with yourself. Its so easy to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others, and criticize us instead of acknowledge and credit us. That little voice in our heads saying “you could have done it this way..” or “you aren’t doing enough..” can drown out any other positive things we tell ourselves.

Like most things are in life, this is going to be a learning process for me. I am my own boss, and my own team. I currently do all of the shooting, editing, social media, book keeping, scheduling, and everything else (with the occasional help of these two amazing people, Carissa and Austin). I am learning to go a little easy on myself, I’m listening to my body more and keeping an eye on when it’s telling me that I need more sleep, food, or breaks.

This wasn’t intended to be a self-care post, but that’s kind of what it’s turning into. Here’s a few things I’m doing that are helping me to take care of myself.

I catch up on my sleep. If I need to sleep for an hour because I had to run a super early errand, I do. If I need to rest my brain and my body for 20 minutes, I do.

If I’m going to be doing a lot of networking in one day/week, I make sure I take it easy the day before. Being introverted, this helps A LOT.

I make sure that I take Saturday or Sunday (mostly Saturdays) off from work. I’ll still post on Instagram and Facebook, but that’s the extent of the work that I do.

I stick to a skin care routine. This may not directly relate to my business, but it helps me feel better, which will in turn effect my business. I could start eating better and exercising, but that’s going to take a lot more effort to start, so I’ll take baby steps and start with my skin.

Even though these four things aren’t the cure to my self imposed pressure and high expectations, they have helped me be a little more understanding and gentle with myself.

If you find yourself setting high and unreasonable expectations for yourself, or that voice in your head beats you up everyday, I encourage you to fight it with taking care of yourself, and maybe even mother yourself a little bit. If you’re doing your best, that should be enough for you.